Non-White Children Bad For World's Future?

Too many of us assume that poor countries, especially
poor non-white countries desperately need help
controlling population. The language used in persuading
us that the world is overpopulated is "nice", it's
"factual", and it's misleading.

The article below presents a different view, and yes we
know the headline is provocative. Why use it? We think
that as Christians a little provocation is a healthy
thing. If you would like to pursue the issue, on both
sides, visit these related links:

From a personal point of view at Domestic-Church.Com, we
can well believe that population control funding is
misused on a global scale. Although we are (my husband
and I) white, we have been poor, very poor. In that
period of poverty we found that the health professionals
we dealt with had no moral qualms whatsoever in deciding
that we should have no more children: we have
experienced first-hand doctors and nurses trying to get
a sign-off on a form permitting the doctor to sterilize
the mother, either while in labor or just after
delivery, without telling us what was on the form, as
well as many other anti-child, anti-poor tactics.

This has happened more than once, and was done by
professionals who knew it was against our wishes. Having
experienced this kind of human rights abuse here in
Canada we feel confident that the whole population
control movement is seriously flawed, does not respect
human rights, does not respect women, does not respect
family and is deeply anti-Christian.

Running a website is a fascinating exercise. More than
once we have been challenged on the article below, as
though it would give Christians a "bad-name", as though
to question overpopulation was itself un-Christian.
Based on our own personal experience we believe the
exact opposite: that to support most of these population
control efforts is anti-Christian. These little snippets
are here to get a conversation going: if you have a
comment either way, we'd love to hear from you at mail@domestic-church.com.

With its "1998 World Population Overview and Outlook for
1999," the Population Institute seems hell-bent on
painting a very ugly picture for the future of mankind.
This report is deceptive. It emphasizes less-important
facts while ignoring more-important facts.

Consider that the Population Institute says that 130
million babies were born during 1998. They fail to
acknowledge that this is a five million per year
reduction compared to 1985-1990.

The Population Institute claims that these 130 million
births have resulted in an addition of 78 million people
to the earth's population, but this too is a reduction
from the 87 million annual increases during
1985-1990.

According to the report, each year ten million children
die before the age of five, but overlook that the UN has
established that eight million of these deaths could be
prevented for about eight million dollars worth of
medicines, vaccines, vitamins or antibiotics (less than
one percent of the money now spent by developed nations
to pay for abortive birth control distributed to
developing nations).

Instead of using resources to assist those in need,
organizations like the Population Institute appear to be
decidedly against anything but destroying needy human
beings. The solution to poverty in developing nations is
not to be found in abortion and sterilization; the
family in need requires concrete training in providing
for the family, not destroying it.

Instead of complaining about "food deficit" countries,
the Population Institute should focus on the UN
statement that "the world as a whole faced no major
constraints in increasing food production by as much as
necessary to meet the growth of effective demand," and
the sixty percent increase in food production per person
in developing countries.

Our problems do not lie in a large population but rather
in ineffective ways of helping those in need. We know
that we actually pay US farmers not to grow food in this
country, so perhaps the Population Institute should
focus on ways of distributing food and other needs to
the less fortunate … not ways of getting rid of the
less fortunate.

A recent public radio program in Canada called "Super
Species" hosted by Dr. David Suzuki has been examining
and presenting a bleak view of the current condition of
the world's environment. During the latest episode of
the show, it was stated that in order to support the
existing world population at the lifestyle of the West,
we'd need another 5 Earth's worth of resources. The
'obvious' conclusion was then made - we need fewer
people or we're going to ruin the world. Why not change
the life style of the West?